News
For the past year, one of AKGP's main focuses was to have "Lithuanian TOEFL" or the certificate of Lithuanian as a Foreign Language created in Lithuania. Since its begining in 2012, AKGP not only gave funds to the Lithuanian Heritage Schools in the US but also researched their needs. The need to formalize years of learning of Lithuanian, and to assess the skils of Lithuanian language, is very important to the students, parents, and the schools.
In 2014, AKGP was able to draw attention of Seimas, Ministry of Education and Science, and various Lithuanian language teaching and testing institutions to recognize the need of the Certificate. In the meeting in the Kazickas Residence, a representative from the Ministry of Education and Science of Lithuania (Virginija Rinkeviciene, Head of the Department for the Lithuanians in the Diaspora), Curriculum for the Teaching of Lithuanian outside Lithuania writer, linguist (Rita Mikelionyte), Lithuanian language specialists from Vilnius University (prof. Meilute Ramoniene and Joana Pribusauskaite) discussed the Ministry's efforts to create Lithuanian language teaching programs and language proficiency assesment mechanisms according to the needs of the diaspora.